Another Van Trip

“I want to talk to you about something,” Paul said, sitting down at the kitchen table with a full glass of water and a trepidatious look, “and I want you to listen until I’m done before you start yelling.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, pushing away my almost-finished dinner. “Given that opening, I’m not sure I can make any promises, but I’ll try.”

Paul took in some air, and looked at me carefully. “When we go to visit Mom and Lyman in Florida this winter,” he said, “I’d really like to drive instead of fly.”

There may be a few of you following along at home who can’t think why that statement might be a prelude to yelling. If you’re in that group, make yourself a nice cup of tea and go read this before you come back to us.

“I promise,” Paul said immediately into my stunned silence, “that I’m not going to try to drive straight through. We’ll stop for a night each way.”

“Uh huh,” I said, but my tone wasn’t acquiescent.

“You can wear headphones all the time so you can’t hear the fighting,” he added. “And I won’t say a word about it.”

“Um,” I said.

“Please?”

I don’t actually understand why he wants to drive, although it doesn’t seem to be rooted in active cruelty. I don’t actually understand why I agreed, either.

Regardless, we are being proactive. We’ve borrowed a bunch of movies from a friend that the boys haven’t seen before, and I intend to let them fry their little brain boxes into temporary oblivion if they so choose. I’ve reserved a hotspot from the library, so I will have my beloved internet with me all the time. There will, of course, be buckets. Just in case.

So I’m okay. See? I’m fine. Because I know everything is going to be great. I am sure of it.

We leave in a couple of weeks. I am not at all nervous about this trip. I am confident that I will get everything packed and set up and I won’t stay up way too late doing any of that and it will be fantastic.